Reflections on the Anthropocene

Reflections on the Anthropocene

Article excerpt

"However these debates will unfold, the Anthropocene represents a
new phase in the history of both humankind and of the Earth, when
natural forces and human forces became intertwined, so that the fate
of one determines the fate of the other. Geologically, this is a
remarkable episode in the history of this planet. This is a little
too big to simply call "news. Indeed, I can't move beyond these
words - especially that heart-stopper, "intertwined - until I'm able
to summon sufficient inner quiet and humility. Geologically, the
paradigm has already shifted. How about spiritually?

The words are those of four geologists and climate scientists,
including Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen,
writing in 2010 in the journal Environmental Science & Technology
(and quoted at phys.org) - making the point that the human
phenomenon has become, for better and for worse, essentially
partnered with nature, a co-creator of the planet's future.

This hypothesis has returned to public attention, as the
International Geological Congress meets in Cape Town, South Africa,
and a working panel has voted that the Anthropocene Epoch - a
planetary shift to a new geological state of existence - be
officially acknowledged by the world's scientific community. That is
to say, the planet has moved beyond what has been called the
Holocene: some 12,000 years of climate stability, which emerged
after the last Ice Age. In this window of opportunity, human
civilization created itself and, in the process, seized hold of and
began changing, the planet's geological infrastructure.

The current hypothesis is that the Anthropocene began, uh ...
about the time "Ozzie and Harriet was hitting the airwaves,
disposable ballpoint pens were finding their market niche and the
Baby Boomers were starting kindergarten. That is to say, the 1950s.

The primary cause of the geological shift, The Guardian reports,
are "the radioactive elements dispersed across the planet by nuclear
bomb tests, although an array of other signals, including plastic
pollution, soot from power stations, concrete, and even the bones
left by the global proliferation of the domestic chicken were now
under consideration."

None of this is good news. Short-sighted human behavior, from
nuclear insanity to agribusiness to the proliferation of plastic
trash, has produced utterly unforeseen consequences, including
disruption of the climate that has nurtured our growth over the last
dozen millennia. This is called recklessness. And mostly the
Anthropocene is described with dystopian bleakness: a time of mass
extinctions. A time of dying.

But I return to the words quoted above: ". . . the Anthropocene
represents a new phase in the history of both humankind and of the
Earth, when natural forces and human forces became intertwined . …